Pennsylvania Guard trainers say counter-drone skills now dominate demand from U.S. units

A small training team at Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania is teaching U.S. troops how to deal with hostile drones, and its trainers say that demand from units now centres almost entirely on counter-unmanned aircraft skills. The programme, run by the U.S. Army National Guard Training Support Branch, was described in a story published on 21 October by the Pennsylvania National Guard.

The Emerging Threat Replication Program (ETRP) puts soldiers through scenarios that imitate the newest threats on the battlefield, so that units arrive at combat training centres and overseas deployments having already met them. At Fort Indiantown Gap a four-person team works from a former post exchange building, concentrating on Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers but also serving other units that train at the installation or ask for support at their own location.

From roadside bombs to drones

The trainers frame the programme as a response to a threat that keeps changing. Troy Heffner, who leads unmanned aircraft employment and counter-drone training for the team, recalled that the emphasis used to be counter-IED work during the Global War on Terror, and that unmanned aircraft are now the biggest emerging threat. Site lead Jared Reed said the training aims to build threat-based exercises into unit training plans so that readiness is maintained ahead of mobilisation.

Reed said that counter-drone training is “basically what every unit is asking for”, adding that it has become a big issue across the service and not only at Fort Indiantown Gap. The programme was formerly called the Asymmetric Threat Training Support Program and has teams at a number of sites around the country.

Tactics before hardware

The team uses U.S. Army programme-of-record drones and counter-drone systems in its lessons, but its trainers stress that the aim is to teach soldiers how to react to a drone overhead, not to showcase equipment. Heffner pointed to the pace of change: by the time a unit has gone through the purchasing process for a piece of kit, he said, it can already be out of date, so the team concentrates on tactics, techniques and procedures.

Beyond flying and defeating small aircraft, the programme offers live, virtual and simulation-based instruction on explosive hazards, explosive ordnance disposal, cyber and electromagnetic activities, and the warfighting functions such as command and control, intelligence, fires and sustainment.

What comes next

Looking ahead, Heffner said that unmanned ground vehicles, and the use of both ground and aerial platforms for cyber and electromagnetic activities, are another emerging threat that the programme is starting to work into its courses.

The emphasis fits a wider pattern of counter-drone fielding. Geopolitiki has reported on the Marine Corps fielding of the L-MADIS system in Hawaii, in L-MADIS counter-drone system reaches 1st LAAD Battalion in Hawaii, with 15 systems delivered in six months, and on a European approach to the same problem in Germany approves net-launcher counter-drone systems and new Patriot units to replace those sent to Ukraine.